The invention provides a support with solder ball elements for loading substrates with ball contacts. In this connection, the expression substrate is understood as meaning the components in semiconductor manufacture to which solder ball elements are to be applied in a predetermined arrangement pattern, such as semiconductor wafers with many semiconductor chip positions, individual semiconductor chips, intermediate wiring boards of semiconductor stack components, wiring boards of individual semiconductor components and/or printed circuit boards of a panel which may have a multiplicity of semiconductor component positions.
The term ball contacts is understood as meaning contacts such as extremely small flip-chip contacts with outer dimensions of a few micrometers through to contacts such as the intermediate contacts in semiconductor component stacks with outer dimensions in the millimeter range. While the flip-chip contacts are positioned on contact areas of, for example, 42×42 μm2 (square micrometers) of a semiconductor wafer or a semiconductor chip, the intermediate contacts span the distance between the underside and the upper side of a semiconductor package in a semiconductor stack component and may reach outer dimensions of several millimeters. Between these two extreme outer dimensions lie the outer dimensions of the external contacts for semiconductor components with BGA (ball grid array) packages, which today are in widespread use.
Nevertheless, the loading of a substrate with ball contacts of this type is difficult, the degree of difficulty involved in specific mounting, and consequently the number of rejects, increasing as the dimensions become smaller, especially since the number of ball contacts to be applied also increases. The loading methods previously used are laborious and cost-intensive. A method of this type provides that the solder ball elements for ball contacts are shaken into depressions of a female mold and, as soon as all the depressions of a prescribed arrangement pattern are filled with solder ball elements, the solder ball elements in the depressions of the female mold can be connected to a corresponding pattern of contact areas on the substrate, for example by being simultaneously soldered on together. This technique is particularly problematical if an entire semiconductor wafer is to be provided with solder ball elements, especially since the number of solder ball elements to be applied simultaneously runs into the thousands.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for the present invention.